


Actions and Words

by orphan_account



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-14 03:51:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1251724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For every action there are reactions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Actions and Words

**Author's Note:**

> A little something I wrote awhile ago

Of course she looked amazing in that dress. Natasha looked amazing in anything she wore, but now she looked classical, with her hair done up in elegant curls, a glittering pin that was a latticework of stems and leaves and flowers holding them up from her face. She was radiant with her dark red lipstick and the dress that flowed like liquid water clinging to every curve, a shining black wave swirling around her perfect legs. There wasn’t a man in the room who wasn’t staring, except for Clint.

He took another shot, wiped his mouth. He turned to look back at the dance floor. There were couples that looked good dancing. Maria and Nick moved with an efficiency that somehow suggested beauty as well as deadliness. Tony and Bruce, who should by rights have looked awkward for their differences moved together in a coordinated, perfect time, and Steve and Pepper Potts, wearing an elegant blue silk number, dancing a little more intimately but no less gracefully. The best by far, though, was Natasha and Bucky Barnes.

And Clint wasn’t jealous. Not by the way her flawless body moved and occasionally brushed against Bucky’s chest, nor by the way he looked into her eyes and you could see the only good memories he had from the last few years of his life there.

Clint surprised himself, by cracking his tumbler in his hand, the delicate snap breaking him from his thoughts. He was strong, but it was pretty rare he broke a glass. He shook his hand, the bartender gave him a look, and Clint tossed a bill on the counter before booking it for the nearest exit.

He couldn’t take this, or that look in Bucky’s eyes. Clint undid the stupid ass bowtie Kate told him to wear, reached behind himself to undo the stupid ass cumberbund. He could hardly breathe, and when he finally got out into the cool air on the roof he realized the sour polluted stink of New York had never smelled so sweet.

He tossed the crumpled purple silk aside before he worked out of his jacket, ripped at the button at his throat.

He tried to swallow, let out a breath.

Everyone might assume he was jealous that Bucky was allowed to touch Natasha. Everyone would be wrong.

He walked to the edge of the roof, stepped up on the ledge and looked down. His balance was perfect, he wasn’t afraid of falling, and he let out a breath that was slow and dragging and painful as he rubbed at his eyes, that were so sore and so tired.

The venom that seemed to spit every time he and Barnes were too close scorched like acid, just as much as James fingertips seemed to burn when they found his hips, when that stupid bastards lips dragged along his throat followed by the drag of his dull teeth.

And then that perfect, beautiful light in his eyes when he beheld Natasha. The reminiscence of old times when he saw Steve. There was even a grudging respect towards Stark. And what did Clint get?

He turned, walking the ledge, his hands clenched in fists as he tried to blink and no his eyes were not getting wet.

Clint got anger and malice. Insults like miasma that only increased when they touched each other and the darkness grew. Steel on his sweating skin as they stroked each other and kissed like they were biting, trying to devour each other.

He sucked in a hard breath that sounded like a rattle in his chest and stumbled, his foot came back, he thought for a second he might fall and would anyone think it was suicide or dumbassery, he didn’t know, but-

-but a firm hand caught his elbow and Clint let himself be guided back. He knew without looking who it was, because of the two people in the entire world that could sneak up on him, only one would approach right now.

He turned to look, his eyes sullen. “Shouldn’t you be dancing with Natasha?” he asked, a touch spitefully.

James - no, Clint reminded himself, Bucky, he was only James between the sheets - regarded him with closed off eyes, like this wasn’t the typical words that should be said after you stop someone from falling to your death. Clint, for a bitter moment, wanted to remind him he’d jumped out of more plate glass windows than he cared to admit, and with these went broken bones, but he didn’t. He kept his silence. After a moment Bucky let go of Clint’s arm, and Clint missed it for some reason, and it made him hate the stupid asshole all the more.

How dare he, making Clint feel like this, and -

“Song ended,” said Bucky.

Clint looked back at the ledge. “A new one started after, I’m sure.”

Bucky sighed in frustration. “Stop this, Clint.”

Clint snorted. “Stop what?”

“This,” he waved his hand, his real one, the other stiff at his side and covered up with a leather glove.

Clint felt a pop culture reference bubble in his throat and he swallowed it down. Bucky wouldn’t get it, and now was not the time. He let out a sigh, knowing he was being hostile without much reason, but just that morning James had started a spectacular fight that for once hadn’t ended in sex, just in a lot of yelling and a hurt silence.

Clint licked his lips, rubbed his eyes. He shouldn’t let this get to him, he should fight because at least that meant he’d be able to kiss him, and it was all he wanted. Because somehow this fucked up thing also was right.

Clint wondered where all this bitterness had grown from, and he supposed it came from their angry hate sex on and off again fucking, like Clint was just some stand in for people that Bucky really and truly wanted and couldn’t have, like they were some kind of unattainable diety’s. Clint wished, maybe, he could be that. But he was only human, and they fought so much there was only ever anger in everything they did.

Clint sighed. “So, Natasha invite you to her room?” It was a dumb question. Bucky would be there, if she had.

“Of course, many times,” said Bucky, walking to the edge of the roof and looking down with a touch of curiosity.

Clint stared at him, waiting for an explanation, wondering if maybe the one Bucky pined for was Steve, which would make sense, almost as much as Bucky and Natasha would.

Bucky looked up, shook his hair back from his eyes. Clint watched him, wondering who was going to deliver the first angry jab that would lead to fighting and fingers pulling hair and teeth sinking into lips and skin.

“You always look at me like that,” said Bucky, with a frown.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re ready for a brawl.”

“When isn’t it, with you?”

Bucky grinned, his eyes changed, although they weren’t warm. Maybe... fond, with a touch of coldness. His armor. “I think this is why I like you,” said Bucky. “I just wish I knew how to do this without doing... this.” He gestured again, and Clint let out a slow breath, his chest suddenly aching. He fought the retort down, a mocking jab about how Bucky was falling for the wrong people or something along those lines.

“You could try not doing this,” he gestured too, because it seemed right, and Bucky’s grin became brittle a moment before it vanished.

Clint understood. It meant it wasn’t always easy, and he nodded, knowing what it meant.

“Natasha really likes you,” said Clint.

There was a pause, a stupidly long pause, because of course Bucky knew she liked him, who didn’t? Clint was about to turn and walk away because hello, dumbass way of talking, when Bucky shifted, making the roof scratch a little under the soles of his shoes.

“I was going to ask you to dance,” said Bucky finally, his voice low.

Clint swallowed, his throat suddenly thick. He tried not to see some kind of metaphor in the way Clint was half drunk and bedraggled with his tux torn apart, and how perfect and cleaned up and classic Bucky looked.

Clint snorted. “I can’t ballroom dance worth a shit.”

“I’m a good teacher,” said Bucky, his hands behind his back and voice sort of mild. Clint hated looking over his well sculpted chest in that suit, hated the way he looked so good in a tux and Clint felt like a play actor who was better left to his unitard.

But for a second in the way Bucky looked at him, the way his eyes actually roamed up and down and over him, Clint felt like he wasn’t just playing dress up. Bucky held out his hand, and Clint took it wondering what the hell was going on, and wondering why they weren’t heading in the inevitable direction for hate sex.

Bucky took his waist, and Clint settled into the following position. They stepped together, and Clint wanted to look away but he couldn’t as they danced to music hummed in Bucky’s throat. His hands were soft and gentle, even the metal one at Clint’s waist, and Clint had to wonder what the hell was happening until he realized it.

That maybe Bucky’s words were his motions. His fighting and his touches and his dances were his way of speaking. Clint didn’t know if he agreed with it or not, but he found his body slipping closer until they were both closer even than Bucky and Natasha had been on the dance floor, a glorious dancing couple that painters would wish to capture.

Then Bucky leaned in and kissed Clint and for the first time it held only an edge of roughness born from practice. Comparatively it was soft and sweet and Clint hadn’t been kissed like this since Bobbi and since he’d given up on any sort of happy ending for himself.

They’d stopped dancing, and Clint pulled away, a touch out of breath.

“Okay,” he said, his thumb stroking over the back of James’s hand, and James smiled at him.

Clint, for a moment, wondered where the sudden tenderness had come from, trying to figure out if the Bucky he knew was capable of it. It was then he remembered when Bucky had demanded he use his real name, call him James when the sheets were over their head and their breath mixed between them. Clint had thought at the time, that Bucky had meant that he didn’t want Clint using his preferred title. Clint hadn’t realized it meant that he wanted Clint to have something special about him.

“I’m trying,” said James, a touch roughly, and Clint nodded. He could read between the lines and hear apologies when they were there.

“I’m still here.” His own apology.

James licked his lips, nodded as well, and looked away.

“No more of that,” said Clint, waving his hand, as if at a phantom couple next to them.

“Well, a little of that,” James grinned, all teeth.

“A little.”

James sobered after a moment then stepped back, offered Clint his arm. “Shall we return to the dance?”

Clint shook his head. “SHIELD rented out most of the rooms in the hotel.”

“I think I know where you’re going with this.”

“Good. Show me how we can do this and that,” said Clint, and James smiled again. 


End file.
